Demographic Trends in North Korea in the 20th Century and Beyond

• Activity Number: 630
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 5, 2010 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Government Statistics
• Author(s): Daniel M. Goodkind*+ and Loraine A. West
• Companies: U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Census Bureau
• Keywords: North Korea ; census ; population ; demographic analysis ; demographic trends ; famine

Abstract

This paper examines changes in North Korea's population. To assess recent censuses, we consider demographic sources back to the pre-partition colonial era and the Korean War. Despite limited and sometimes questionable data, sources are sufficient to attempt a triangulation of evidence. In a prior study, we concluded that the 1993 census count could not be invalidated based on other demographic evidence. However, the count from the 2008 census exceeds what we projected from the 1993 census by 7 percent. This discrepancy might be due to a relative undercount in the 1993 census compared to the 2008 census, famine deaths in the 1990s being lower than what we had estimated, or other factors. This paper sorts through these possibilities, all of which require consideration of North Korea's turbulent past.